Welcome To Tantrum City
Today was one of those days. From the moment we woke up to the moment my son went to sleep, we were stuck in Tantrum City. Tantrum City is a wonderous place, where your entire day could get completely f*cked in just a matter of seconds.
All it takes is one wrong turn, one false step, or perhaps even nothing at all. Every left turn is actually supposed to be a right, so you never end up where you’re trying to go. The street sign names are jumbled up in all the wrong places. The territory that you can usually maneuver so seamlessly is now impossible to navigate. The cars are all parked backwards and the buildings are upside down.
There are unlimited booby traps strategically placed throughout the city such that they will be set off at the absolute least convenient times. Your ability to get from Point A to Point B will now take you two hours instead of the normal five minutes. Once you enter Tantrum City, there is no telling when or how you will make it out.
Sometimes even those with the strongest of defenses against such chaos will find themselves left with no choice but to let Jesus take the wheel. Only if you do let go of the wheel, Lord knows it won’t be Jesus that takes it. It will be the three-foot tall, thirty-something pound toddler body that’s densely packed with nothing but explosive emotion bombs.
Yes, today we were stuck there, smack-dab in the middle of Tantrum City. Every single, little, teeny tiny thing lead to a tantrum, all day long. It was a hard day for both of us, to say the least. We never quite made it out. The only relief we got was when his head finally hit the pillow for the night.
I Tried My Best
Throughout the day, I kept my cool as best I could. I pulled out all the parenting tricks I have up my sleeve: meeting him with compassion and understanding, getting on his eye level when talking to him, asking him/talking to him about his feelings, holding him and just letting him cry, thinking of solutions or distractions, and feeding him some favorite snacks. Some would work for a minute or two here and there, but that’s it. Today, this little guy had no give.
Trying to calm a toddler down from a tantrum is exhausting. Doing it on repeat for hours on end is just unfair. My patience dwindled like a piece of unraveling rope. I clung on until the very last fiber finally snapped around 1 pm. Not too bad considering there had been multiple tantrums (and I mean full-blown, kicking and screaming, inconsolable meltdowns) per hour since 8 am, right? Even still, I always feel like sh*t when I lose it. I know it doesn’t help anyone or anything, but I just couldn’t take it anymore.
He Punched Me In The Face
I decided we would go to the farmer’s market just to get him out of the house for a little bit (another trick that usually works pretty well). Boy, did I underestimate how much of a hassle it would be just to get out the door. There were tantrums about totally random things throughout the whole process of getting ready to leave. I was getting more and more irritated, but I still kept calm throughout it all.
Eventually, he agreed to get dressed. As I got his clothes on, he kept trying to mess with the hat I was wearing. I asked him nicely and sternly to stop several times. Then what does he do? He starts trying to knock it off my head by swinging his fist toward my face and then up to my hat. Only he doesn’t have the hand-eye coordination to pull that off yet. So instead, he ends up punching me square in my face. This kid straight took a right hook to my eye three times in a row. His body moved so fast it took a second to process what the f*ck was going on. Even if it was an accident, it pushed me right up to the very edge.
My Turn To Tantrum
I could feel the weight of my patience tugging on that very last rope fiber. I yelled. Oh, I yelled, so loud, “NO! Hell no!!” And from there proceeded to threaten a time out if he ever hit anyone like that again. He stopped immediately, taken aback by my reaction. I feel bad now because I know it was an accident, but at that moment, all of that rage inside me left no room for empathy.
I took a breath, calmed down a little bit, and thanked him for getting dressed. All we had left to do was put our shoes on and get out the door.
My husband works from home and he could hear how hard of a day we were having. He so sweetly offered to get our son’s shoes on while I gathered our stuff and put my own shoes on. He’s been offering help like that more and more lately as anything that involves bending over is only getting harder on me. I felt so relieved to have just one less physically annoying task to do. But of course, our son did not find this suitable.
Obviously, we were supposed to know that this particular time he only wanted me to put his shoes on, not my husband. He freaked the f*ck out without giving us any chance to negotiate, or even agree to his terms! It would’ve been easier to just have me do his shoes at that point, but we can’t just give into his demands when he asks by throwing a tantrum like that. There’s no way in hell we want to reinforce that behavior and have him thinking that’s a viable way to get what he wants. So we ended up having to do it the hard way, on a day that was already so f*cking hard.
I let my husband battle it out with him for a few minutes. Even when I’m not the one dealing with the battle, it’s still stressful to hear, so it wasn’t exactly a break from the action. They came back downstairs and our son was screaming his head off. His shoes were on, though, so I picked him up, tried to comfort him, and tried to get us out the door ASAP. But, of course, this didn’t work. He started squirming so much that I couldn’t hold him anymore, so I let him down. He threw his screaming self to the floor, took his shoes off, and chucked them across the room. I was so beyond frustrated at this point, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
I Lost My Sh*t
The throwing sh*t, the crying when he doesn’t get his way, the screaming. All I could think was,
“Just stop. Just please, make the screaming stop for even just one hour of the day.”
Snap went the last rope fiber on which my patience was clung to. And down my patience fell into the depths of somewhere unreachable inside me.
I yelled, I screamed, I think I threw one of his toys to the side that was in my way, and I f*cking left. I closed the gate at the bottom of the stairs and left him down there. I went into his room, sat on the bed, placed my face in my hands and just sat there. I thought I needed a cry, but no tears came out. I was filled with so many different emotions, my brain and body didn’t know what to do with them all. I sat there with loud, short, heavy breaths, letting myself just be in whatever emotional state I was in.
After a couple of minutes and a lot of deep breaths, I felt gathered enough to go back down there and try to comfort him. When I got downstairs he was at the gate, *still* screaming his head off. I tried to give him a hug, but it took a minute for him to be willing. He just ran around crying for another few minutes.
When he was finally ready, I had a long, calm talk with him about how he needs to let daddy help us do more stuff, how we were all feeling frustrated and upset, and how we all need to think of ways that we could handle our emotions better. He listened calmly, and we were able to get out the door a few minutes later.
The Finale
The rest of the day went okay. The tantrums died down a little, but by no means disappeared. Being out of the house for a while definitely did end up helping. But of course, he wasn’t going to end this day without a big finale. He decided to showcase it at dinner. I made him his favorite meal in the world: veggie pasta topped with olive oil and parmesan cheese. I didn’t even make the turkey and broccoli that usually go with it, which usually takes some convincing for him to eat.
For some reason, he decided to eat all of his pasta with his hands. I didn’t think anything of it, he does that randomly. But once his pasta was gone, he realized he had actually wanted to eat all of it with his fork. Not any new pasta, only the pasta that he had already eaten. So he was just sitting there, sobbing, and saying,
“You want to eat the pasta with the fork, but it’s already in you mouth!”
If the day hadn’t been so exhausting, it would’ve been hard not to laugh at that one. I did feel so bad for him, though. Poor little guy, he just couldn’t get a handle on any of his emotions.
Somehow, he eventually calmed down, and the second he was done with dinner we went straight upstairs to get him ready for bed. There was an issue at every single step of the night-time routine, but when we finally got him into his bed, he was out like a light. Finally, the day had ended, and I let out the loudest exhale of my life.
In this post, there is no message, no lesson, no tips. Sometimes you just get stuck in Tantrum City and the whole day turns into a sh*tty mess. Sometimes giving your absolute best effort has no effect, and there is nothing you can do about it. It’s just a part of parenthood. Luckily, it’s not like this all the time. But I would bet my hat that every parent experiences a day or two like this in their journey.
And that’s the mom tea.
With Love,
Jennelle